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Angels and demons: The effect of ethical leadership on Machiavellian employees' workbehaviors
Belschak, F.D.; den Hartog, D.N.; de Hoogh, A.H.B.
Published in:Frontiers in Psychology
DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01082
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Citation for published version (APA):Belschak, F. D., den Hartog, D. N., & de Hoogh, A. H. B. (2018). Angels and demons: The effect of ethicalleadership on Machiavellian employees' work behaviors. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, [1082].https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01082
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ORIGINAL RESEARCHpublished: 28 June 2018
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01082
Edited by:Barbara Wisse,
University of Groningen, Netherlands
Reviewed by:Athena Xenikou,
Hellenic Air Force Academy, GreeceRita Berger,
University of Barcelona, Spain
*Correspondence:Frank D. Belschak
Specialty section:This article was submitted to
Organizational Psychology,a section of the journalFrontiers in Psychology
Received: 28 September 2017Accepted: 07 June 2018Published: 28 June 2018
Citation:Belschak FD, Den Hartog DN and
De Hoogh AHB (2018) Angelsand Demons: The Effect of Ethical
Leadership on MachiavellianEmployees’ Work Behaviors.
Front. Psychol. 9:1082.doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01082
Angels and Demons: The Effect ofEthical Leadership on MachiavellianEmployees’ Work BehaviorsFrank D. Belschak* , Deanne N. Den Hartog and Annebel H. B. De Hoogh
Section of Leadership and Management, Amsterdam Business School, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Machiavellians can be characterized as goal-driven people who are willing to use allpossible means to achieve their ends, and employees scoring high on Machiavellianismare thus predisposed to engage in unethical and organizationally undesirable behaviors.We propose that leadership can help to manage such employees in a way that reducesundesirable and increases desirable behaviors. Studies on the effects of leadershipstyles on Machiavellian employees are scarce. Here we investigate the relationship ofethical leadership with prosocial (helping colleagues or affiliative OCB) and antisocialwork behavior (knowledge hiding and emotional manipulation) for employees whoare higher or lower in Machiavellianism. The effect of an ethical leadership style onemployees predisposed to engage in unethical behaviors has not been investigatedso far. In a cross-sectional multi-source survey study among a sample of 159 uniqueleader–follower dyads, we find interaction effects between leadership and employeeMachiavellianism for prosocial and antisocial work behavior. As expected, employeeMachiavellianism comes with reduced helping behavior and increased knowledge hidingand emotional manipulation, but only when ethical leadership is low. Under highlyethical leaders, such increases in organizationally undesirable behaviors of Machiavellianemployees do not occur. While the cross-sectional design precludes conclusions aboutthe direction of causality, findings of our study suggest to further explore (and from apractical perspective to invest in) ethical leadership as a potential remedy for undesirablebehavior of Machiavellian employees.
Keywords: Machiavellianism, ethical leadership, organizational citizenship behavior, knowledge hiding, emotionalmanipulation
INTRODUCTION
The psychological literature describes Machiavellians as master manipulators who are willingto use all possible means to achieve their ends (e.g., Wilson et al., 1996; Jones and Paulhus,2009). Employees scoring high on Machiavellianism (high-Machs) have been consistently found toengage in a plethora of unethical and counterproductive behaviors including lying, theft, sabotage,and bullying in numerous studies (see Dahling et al., 2012). High-Machs might eventually evencontribute to the creation of an unethical organizational culture by acting as role models andsignaling to others that “anything goes” (e.g., Felps et al., 2006; Pinto et al., 2008). As a consequence,the recommendation of most studies has been to identify and avoid high-Mach employees (e.g.,Dahling et al., 2009; Kiazad et al., 2010). However, high-Mach individuals are proficient in
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deceiving and manipulating their social environment (Davies andStone, 2003; McIlwain, 2003), thus it might not always be easy toidentify Machiavellians in organizations. Also, some authors havenoted that high-Machs do not always engage in unethical andcounterproductive behaviors; they also show pro-organizationalbehavior as long as they feel that this is instrumental for achievingtheir goals (Wilson et al., 1996; Belschak et al., 2015). As Belschaket al. (2015, p. 1935) argue, organizations cannot always avoidhaving some Machiavellian employees on board, and they suggestto move the focus toward having a better understanding ofhow to manage high-Mach employees in a way that reducesorganizationally undesirable and increases desirable behaviors.Here, we propose that ethical leadership can offer effective waysto do so.
Research on leading Machiavellian employees is hardlyavailable, and the effects of different leadership styles andbehaviors on Machiavellian employees have not received muchattention to date. The few existing studies focus on the effectsof transformational leadership (Belschak et al., 2015), managerialcontrol (Bagozzi et al., 2013), and leader Machiavellianism (Wisseet al., 2015; Belschak et al., 2016). None of these studies explorehow to decrease high-Machs’ highly undesirable tendency toengage in unethical behaviors. Somewhat related, Belschak et al.(2015) address how to increase high-Machs’ pro-organizationalbehavior and show that transformational leaders, who emphasizethe importance of new missions and organizational change,are able to stimulate challenging organizational citizenshipbehavior (OCB) such as making suggestions for change initiativesin high-Mach followers (Belschak et al., 2015). High-Machemployees have a strong goal orientation and instrumentalfocus (see Christie and Geis, 1970; Jones and Paulhus, 2009)and by emphasizing the importance of change and change-oriented behavior, showing their appreciation of such changeinitiatives, and empowering employees to make such changes,transformational leaders seem to stimulate high-Machs inparticular to engage in such behavior. Yet, this strict goalorientation of high-Machs also implies that such increases inchallenging OCB under transformational leaders might notgeneralize to a wider range of behaviors (e.g., helping colleaguesif this is not clearly to their own benefit) and might notreduce unethical work behaviors (e.g., manipulating, cuttingcorners, or hiding knowledge from others). To stimulate thesetypes of behaviors, we propose that leaders may need toemphasize specifically the importance of employees showingethical behavior and hence explicitly engage in ethical leadership.
Ethical leaders (i.e., leaders who demonstrate “normativelyappropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonalrelationships,” Brown et al., 2005, p. 120) act as role models ofethical behavior, communicate ethical standards, reward ethicalbehavior, and punish unethical behaviors (see Den Hartog, 2015).Their behavior sends strong signals to their employees that ethicalbehavior is important and will be rewarded while unethicalbehavior is undesirable and will be punished. As noted, high-Machs’ strong goal orientation (“doing what it takes to achieveone’s ends”) should make them particularly sensitive to thesignals leaders send about what is appreciated, and high-Machsshould hence react to ethical leadership with reduced unethical,
antisocial work behavior (manipulation and knowledge hiding)and increased ethical, prosocial behavior (helping colleaguesor affiliative OCB). Specifically, we hypothesize that comparedto low-Mach employees, high-Mach employees show increasedaffiliative OCB and decreased knowledge hiding and emotionalmanipulation under highly ethical leaders and, vice versa, theyshow less affiliative OCB and more knowledge hiding andmanipulation when ethical leadership is low. Greenbaum et al.(2017) argued that abusive leaders stimulate manipulative andunethical behavior in Machiavellians. Here, we similarly reasonthat low ethical leadership may stimulate unethical behavior suchas deception and manipulation, whereas high ethical leadershipmay inhibit such behavior and rather stimulate ethical behaviorincluding helping others in need rather than manipulating andhiding knowledge from them.
Our study adds to both the literature on leadership and onMachiavellianism. In particular, we contribute to the streamof literature investigating the impact of “dark-side” traits likethe dark triad (Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism;Paulhus and Williams, 2002). While the main effects of Mach arewell researched, the interactive effects of Mach in leader–followerinteractions and the outcomes of these interactions only receivedattention more recently (e.g., Nevicka et al., 2011; Den Hartogand Belschak, 2012; Belschak et al., 2015; Wisse et al., 2015). Wealso add to a stream of research in leadership focusing on howto lead specific groups of employees. Based on their traits andvalues, employees seem to react differently to their leaders (e.g.,Ehrhart and Klein, 2001; De Hoogh and Den Hartog, 2009), andhere we investigate the role of Machiavellianism on employees’reactions to ethical leadership. This study contributes specificallyto research on ethical leadership and Machiavellianism byshowing that ethical leader behavior is suitable for counteringantisocial behavioral tendencies in a group of employees (high-Machs) that bears a high risk of engaging in unethical behaviors(e.g., Dahling et al., 2012). Finally, by studying the effectof employee Machiavellianism on their behavioral reactionsto ethical leader behaviors, we provide empirical support forscholars who argue that even high-Mach employees do notalways engage in unethical behaviors and are also able to showcooperative behavior (e.g., Wilson et al., 1996; Kessler et al., 2010).
Machiavellianism in OrganizationsIn the psychological literature (e.g., Christie and Geis, 1970;Jones and Paulhus, 2009), Machiavellianism is defined as apersonality trait that refers to “a strategy of social conduct thatinvolves manipulating others for personal gain, often againstthe other’s self-interest” (Wilson et al., 1996, p. 285). It isregarded as a quantitative trait which implies that all individualsmay show manipulative behavior at times, but some may beprone to showing such behavior more often than others. High-Mach individuals are characterized by a specific constellation ofcharacteristics which can be summarized by (a) a strong goalfocus and (b) the willingness to use all possible means to achievetheir goals.
High-Machs show a strong goal focus and stress achievementand winning (Jones and Paulhus, 2009). This goal focus motivatesthem to use all possible means to achieve their ends (“winning
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above all”) and ultimately allows high-Machs to show highperformance especially if given the opportunity to manipulateand bend rules (Shultz, 1993; Bagozzi et al., 2013), even underconditions of constrained access to resources (Kuyumcu andDahling, 2014). Supervisors, however, usually evaluate high-Mach employees less positively than low-Machs (Ricks andFraedrich, 1999). Thus, while the unmitigated use of all means toachieve their ends helps high-Machs to achieve high performanceor other goals, it often negatively affects their evaluations byothers at the same time, at least in the long run (see Jones andPaulhus, 2009).
High-Machs’ willingness to deploy antisocial and unethicalstrategies can be explained by several mechanisms. First,Machiavellian individuals have a cynical, negative worldview,always expecting the worst from other people (Christie andGeis, 1970). This provides them with a justification forshowing unethical behavior, “others would have acted similarly.”Consistently, high-Machs trusted others less in economicsituations than low-Machs (Sakalaki et al., 2007). At thesame time, high-Machs are emotionally detached from theirown actions, allowing them to engage in unethical behaviorswithout experiencing negative feelings like guilt or remorse (e.g.,McHoskey et al., 1998; Wastell and Booth, 2003). The regulatorysocial function of (self-conscious) negative emotions is thus notequally strongly available to Machiavellians as it is to those lowon Mach (Bagozzi et al., 2013, provide a neurological explanationfor this deficit). Finally, Machiavellianism comes with a strongself-focus and egoism (Fehr et al., 1992) resulting in a lack ofattachment and commitment toward others or the organization(Zettler et al., 2007). Consistently, McLeod and Genereux (2008)note that high-Machs only lie if they profit, not if others profit(i.e., no “white lies”).
The mentioned characteristics of Machiavellianism all provideexplanations for high-Machs’ low threshold to engage inunethical behaviors, even when being antisocial and (potentially)harming others, and their lack of willingness to engage inbehavior that benefits others if it not also clearly benefits them.In line with the arguments above, high-Mach individuals tendto show a number of unethical and counterproductive workbehaviors (see Dahling et al., 2009, 2012). For instance, high-Machs are found to lie and deceive others (e.g., Williamset al., 2010), steal (e.g., Harrell and Hartnagel, 1976), defectduring bargaining (Gunnthorsdottir et al., 2002), engage insabotage (e.g., McLeod and Genereux, 2008), and use emotionalmanipulation (e.g., Austin et al., 2007). Some studies report thatthey engage in less helping behaviors (Wolfson, 1981; Beckerand O’Hair, 2007), while other studies (e.g., Dahling et al., 2009;Bagozzi et al., 2013) report a non-significant relationship of Machwith OCB, which suggests that moderating variables might play arole here.
Studies on Machiavellianism and leadership are scarce. Thelimited research available on Machiavellian leaders suggests thathigh-Mach leaders stimulate less positive responses in theirfollowers than low-Mach leaders (e.g., Den Hartog and Belschak,2012; Belschak et al., 2016). They are also more often perceivedas abusive leaders by their followers (Kiazad et al., 2010). Yet,research has also found that high-Mach leaders can be seen as
determined and charismatic by followers (Deluga, 2001), andare able to increase employee engagement when showing ethicalleader behavior (even though their effect was less strong thanwhen low-Machs engaged in ethical leader behaviors; Den Hartogand Belschak, 2012). This demonstrates high-Mach leaders’ability to adapt their behavior to the situation despite of beingdetached from their followers’ interpersonal concerns (Deluga,2001; Dahling et al., 2009).
Even fewer studies than on Machiavellian leaders have beenconducted on leading Machiavellian employees, and thus theeffects of different leadership styles on Machiavellian employeeshave not received much attention to date. Noteworthy exceptionsare the studies by Belschak et al. (2015) who have investigatedthe reactions of Machiavellian employees to transformationalleaders, by Belschak et al. (2016) who explored the effects ofhigh-Mach leaders on high- versus low-Mach followers, and byWisse et al. (2015) who address the role of all three dark triadtraits in leaders and followers. Here, we add to this stream ofresearch by testing the effects of ethical leadership on high-Mach versus low-Mach employees’ ethical (affiliative OCB) andunethical work behavior (knowledge hiding and (emotional)manipulation). To our knowledge, research has not yet exploredwhich leadership style might be effective in reducing high-Machs’ highly undesirable tendency to engage in unethical workbehaviors.
Ethical Leadership and MachiavellianEmployeesEthical leadership can be defined as “the demonstration ofnormatively appropriate conduct through personal actions andinterpersonal relationships, and the promotion of such conductto followers through two-way communication, reinforcement,and decision-making” (Brown et al., 2005, p. 120). Past researchon ethical leadership has shown that such leaders foster theirfollowers’ ethical behavior and decrease their unethical behavior(e.g., Brown et al., 2005; Den Hartog and De Hoogh, 2009;Piccolo et al., 2010; Kalshoven et al., 2011b) and has been linkedspecifically to OCB (e.g., Mayer et al., 2009; Den Hartog andBelschak, 2012).
Ethical leaders are value driven and act in line withtheir principles (Brown and Treviño, 2006). They stress theimportance of fair, moral, and ethical behavior and the avoidanceof unethical behavior, and they live up to the values theyespouse (Den Hartog, 2015). Ethical leaders act as role modelsof ethical behavior and stimulate ethical behavior and conduct byrewarding (ethical employee behavior) and punishing (unethicalemployee behavior) of their followers. They send strong andclear signals to their employees that ethical behavior is desirableand will be noticed and rewarded while unethical behaviors areundesirable and will be punished when detected. In contrast,leaders low on ethical leadership do not signal and model theimportance of integrity and ethical conduct, and do not monitorfor or use rewards or sanctioning to stimulate such conduct.
As noted, high-Mach employees are self-centered and goal-driven, and they are thus likely to be more sensitive than low-Machs to messages about what type of behavior is likely to resultin the highest rewards for them and will adapt their own behavior
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accordingly. For example, Wilson et al. (1996, p. 287) describe“Machiavellianism as a kind of master strategy that includes bothcooperative and defecting substrategies, plus a system of rules forwhen to use them.” Similarly, Kessler et al. (2010) note that high-Machs can use manipulation and deceit but can also be genuinelyaccommodating and respectful, depending on what seems mostadvantageous for achieving their goals in a given situation. Whilelow-Machs may generally show more ethical behavior than high-Machs, high-Machs may be more sensitive to cues from theenvironment about which behaviors are rewarded.
High-Machs have a strong preference for money and power(Stewart and Stewart, 2006; Sakalaki et al., 2007) suggestingthat they strongly value the extrinsic motivational aspects oftheir work (e.g., promotions, status, power, and money). Wetherefore expect that followers will show increased ethical formsof behavior under ethical leaders given that this behavior is clearlyexpected, monitored for, and rewarded by the leader, and thatthis positive relationship will even be stronger for high-Machsthan for low-Machs due to high-Machs’ strong goal orientationand their sensitivity to rewards (Jones and Paulhus, 2009; Kessleret al., 2010). Also, ethical leaders’ own ethical behavior sends asignal to employees that such behavior will facilitate achieving aleadership position in the organization, encouraging high-Machswho strongly value positions of status and power to engage invicarious learning and copy such ethical behavior. In contrast,low ethical leaders do not expect or monitor for ethical behaviorand may send the signal that “anything goes.” Under suchleaders, we expect that high-Machs do not show increased ethicalbehaviors and rather engage more in unethical means to reachtheir goals, including particularly deception and manipulation.
Scholars have argued that a communal and people orientation(showing respect, supporting and helping others) is an essentialpart of ethical leadership (e.g., Treviño et al., 2003; Kalshovenet al., 2011b; see also Den Hartog, 2015). This implies ethicalleaders will emphasize the importance of and reward showingaffiliative behavior. High-Machs are more sensitive to suchrewards than low-Machs and are therefore likely to showincreased affiliative behavior only when ethical leadership ishigh, not under low ethical leadership as such leaders do notemphasize the importance nor reward employees for supportingand helping colleagues, and helping others is not somethingthat high-Machs would typically do if they did not explicitlyexpect to be rewarded for it (Dahling et al., 2009). We thereforehypothesize the following.
Hypothesis 1. Machiavellianism and ethical leadership willhave interactive effects on affiliative OCB, such that therelationship between Machiavellianism and affiliative OCBwill be more positive under highly ethical leaders than underlow ethical leadership.
While generally high-Machs will show more unethicalbehavior than low-Machs, unethical behaviors by high-Machemployees should strongly decrease under ethical leaders. Theseleaders monitor follower behaviors on an ethical dimension,communicate clearly that unethical behaviors are not acceptable,and punish such behaviors when detected. This active monitoring
decreases high-Machs’ room to maneuver and signals thatunethical behavior is likely not to lead to reward but topunishment. As noted, high-Machs adapt their behavior to thesituation and do not always engage in unethical behaviors; inparticular, they do not show manipulation and deception if itis not advantageous or might even be detrimental for achievingtheir goals (Wilson et al., 1996; Kessler et al., 2010). Here, weinvestigate two specific types of manipulation and deceptionbehavior, namely, knowledge hiding (e.g., Webster et al., 2008;Connelly et al., 2012) and (emotional) manipulation (Austinet al., 2007). Both of these behaviors can be labeled unethicalbehaviors. In this respect, Gini (1998) argues that, in orderto act ethically, individuals need to consider and respect theinterests and rights of all affected parties in their behaviors.Yet, when hiding knowledge from others, the knowledge hideraccepts that the interests of others might be harmed due toa lack of information. Emotional manipulation refers to theinstrumental use of reading and managing others’ emotions tosuit one’s interests, even against the interests of others (Austinet al., 2007). Such behaviors are in conflict with being a “moralperson” who carefully considers the consequences of one’s actions(cf. Treviño et al., 2000). Both knowledge hiding and emotionalmanipulation thus refer to behaviors that ignore and neglectothers’ needs or interests and may even go against those needs inorder to maximize satisfaction of one’s own (or one’s own group’s)interests and can thus be considered as unethical (see Den Hartog,2015).
Knowledge hiding refers to employees’ efforts to withhold orconceal knowledge from colleagues rather than share it, even ifthat knowledge is useful for or needed by them (e.g., Connellyet al., 2012; Connelly and Zweig, 2015). Knowledge hiding ishence the opposite of sharing knowledge with and helpingcolleagues and forms the antisocial, unethical counterpart of pro-social affiliative OCB as it refers to an active and intentionalattempt of employees to hide their knowledge from colleagues.
As noted, ethical leaders advocate communal and people-oriented behaviors (see Den Hartog, 2015), and knowledgeand information sharing has been identified as part of ethicalleadership (Kalshoven et al., 2011b). In line with this, followers ofethical leaders were found to show increased knowledge sharing(Ma et al., 2013). Thus, we argue that, under highly ethicalleaders, high-Machs’ adaptivity and goal focus will not only leadto increased affiliative OCB but also to decreased knowledgehiding activities compared to low-Machs who are more likely toalready be willing to share knowledge regardless of their leader’sbehavior, as high-Machs likely perceive that under ethical leaders,who monitor them, knowledge hiding will be easily discoveredand is detrimental for their career (Connelly et al., 2012). Incontrast, leaders low on ethical leadership do not emphasize andmonitor employee behavior on a moral dimension and thus aremore likely to give the signal to high-Machs that they do notneed to pay attention to ethical behaviors but can cut cornersand deceive others without being punished. Given high-Machspredisposition to fall back on unethical behaviors (Jones andPaulhus, 2009), we thus expect their knowledge hiding to increasewhen ethical leadership is low compared to when it is high. Wetherefore hypothesize the following.
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Hypothesis 2. Machiavellianism and ethical leadership willhave interactive effects on knowledge hiding, such thatthe relationship between Machiavellianism and knowledgehiding will be less positive under highly ethical leaders thanunder low ethical leadership.
While knowledge hiding refers to an unethical behaviortargeting specifically colleagues (Connelly et al., 2012), we arguethat high-Machs’ tendencies to engage in unethical behaviors willgeneralize and also show in other social contexts (Christie andGeis, 1970; Jones and Paulhus, 2009). We therefore investigate asecond unethical, antisocial behavior aimed at a different target,namely the use of manipulative behavior toward leaders. Theuse of manipulation is one of the defining characteristics ofMachiavellianism (Christie and Geis, 1970) and an importantpart of measures of Machiavellianism (cf. Christie and Geis,1970; Dahling et al., 2009; Kessler et al., 2010). Emotionalmanipulation is defined as manipulating others’ emotions withina self-serving framework (e.g., Grieve and Mahar, 2010) and hasbeen positively linked to both Machiavellianism (Austin et al.,2007) and psychopathy (Grieve and Mahar, 2010), potentiallybecause it is an effective but more covert type of manipulationcompared to other manipulative behaviors (e.g., lying, providingfalse information). Due to this reduced risk of discovery andthe power differential between leaders and followers, emotionalmanipulation seems a type of manipulation particularly suitableto be used by followers with their leaders.
Ethical leaders emphasize fairness, are trustworthy and honest,advocate integrity, and communicate the importance of suchbehaviors to employees (Brown et al., 2005; Kalshoven et al.,2011b). Ethical leaders thus do not use manipulation themselvesand clearly signal to employees that manipulative behavior isnot acceptable and will lead to negative consequences (seeDen Hartog, 2015). As noted above, we argue that high-Machemployees are particularly sensitive to their leaders’ signalsand expectations about desirable behaviors (e.g., Kessler et al.,2010) and will therefore avoid (or at least reduce) the use ofmanipulative behaviors under highly ethical leaders. Leaders lowon ethical leadership, in contrast, do not discuss or model ethicalbehavior nor do they monitor or punish (un)ethical employeebehaviors, and high-Machs should therefore more freely engagein emotional manipulation under such leaders. We thereforeexpect the following.
Hypothesis 3. Machiavellianism and ethical leadership willhave interactive effects on emotional manipulation, such thatthe relationship between Machiavellianism and emotionalmanipulation will be less positive under highly ethical leadersthan under low ethical leadership.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Procedure and SampleWe tested the three moderation hypotheses presented abovein a multi-source survey study among 159 unique employee-supervisor dyads in Netherlands. We used business schoolcontacts to get access to organizations and asked these
organizations whether they would be willing to participate in astudy on leadership in organizations and its impact on employees.The organization had to provide contact information of one oftheir employees and his/her supervisor. We then sent employeeand supervisor a paper-and-pencil version of the survey byemail accompanied by a letter explaining the purpose and purelyacademic nature of the study and the voluntary and confidentialnature of participation. Respondents did not receive anythingin return for participating in the study. After having readthis information, respondents filled in the survey. The studywas carried out in accordance with the recommendations ofthe Economics and Business Ethics Committee, University ofAmsterdam, who approved the protocol for the study (request nr20171124121141). In total, we sent out 240 employee–supervisorsurveys, and we received 159 employee–supervisor dyads back,resulting in a response rate of 66%. Surveys were administeredin Dutch. All survey scales came from validated measures andwere carefully translated and back-translated by native speakers,respecting the norms of the International Test Commission.
Respondents worked in a wide range of industries includinghealth services, IT, architecture, account management,consultancy, education, and financial services. Of theparticipating employees, 37% were male and 63% female.The mean age of the employees was 34.98 years (SD = 13.36),and the average tenure at their current organization was 6.80years (SD = 8.85). In total, 40% of the employees had attaineda university (master’s) degree. Of the participating supervisors,57% were male and 43% female. The mean age of the supervisorswas 42.23 years (SD = 12.15); their mean organizational tenurewas 10.27 years (SD = 9.18). Supervisors had worked withthe participating employee together for 3.21 years on average(SD = 3.73); 45% of the supervisors held a university master’sdegree.
MeasuresEmployees rated their own degree of Machiavellianism, theirsupervisors’ ethical leader behaviors, and their own knowledgehiding behaviors toward their colleagues and emotionalmanipulation toward their supervisor. Supervisors rated theiremployees’ affiliative OCB. All responses were measured on aseven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“completely disagree”)to 7 (“completely agree”).
Employee Machiavellianism was measured with eight itemsfrom the Mach-IV scale by Christie and Geis (1970) which is stillthe most widely used measure in studies on Machiavellianism.This Dutch eight-item short measure of Machiavellianism wasused successfully in several recent studies in the Netherlands (e.g.,Den Hartog and Belschak, 2012; Belschak et al., 2015, 2016).Sample items are “It is wise to flatter important people” and“Never tell anyone the real reason you did something unless itis useful to do so.” Cronbach’s alpha of the scale was 0.80.
Employees’ perception of their leaders’ ethical leadership wasmeasured with the oft-used 10-item scale by Brown et al. (2005).This measure is well validated and was used in the Dutch contextsuccessfully before (e.g., Kalshoven et al., 2011a,b; Den Hartogand Belschak, 2012). Sample items are “My leader discussesbusiness ethics or values with employees,” “sets an example
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of how to do things the right way in terms of ethics,” or“disciplines employees who violate ethical standards.” Cronbach’salpha was 0.84.
Due to the conceptual overlap (e.g., caring about others,acting as role models for followers; see Brown and Treviño,2006) and the substantial empirical correlations usually foundbetween ethical and transformational leadership (e.g., Brownet al., 2005; Toor and Ofori, 2009; see Ng and Feldman,2015), leadership scholars have emphasized the need to controlfor transformational leadership in studies regarding ethicalleadership (see Den Hartog, 2015). We therefore also includedtransformational leadership in our survey and used the 11-itemmeasure of the Dutch “Charismatic Leadership in Organizations(CLIO)” questionnaire to measure employees’ perception of theirleaders’ transformational leadership (e.g., “My leader has a clearvision and an image of the future” and “stimulates subordinatesto think independently”). This Dutch measure covers contentsimilar to other measures of transformational leadership likethe MLQ (e.g., Bass and Avolio, 1990; House, 1998). It is wellvalidated and has been used in several leadership studies in theNetherlands before (e.g., De Hoogh et al., 2004, 2005; De Hooghand Den Hartog, 2009). Cronbach’s alpha was 0.90.
Affiliative OCB was measured with seven items by MacKenzieet al. (1991). The items cover the helping and the courtesydimension of this widely used multi-dimensional measure ofOCB. Sample items are “This employee is always willing to helpthe people around him/her” and “considers the impact of his/heractions on others.” Cronbach’s alpha was 0.84.
The knowledge hiding scale is a relatively new measurewhich was first introduced by Connelly et al. (2012). Weused seven items of this measure capturing all differentstrategies of knowledge hiding (playing dumb, evasive hiding,and rationalized hiding). Sample items read “When a colleaguerecently asked for information I agreed to help the colleague butprovided different information than the requested one” and “Ipretended that I did not know the information.” Cronbach’s alphawas 0.86.
The emotional manipulation measure was also relativelyrecently developed and introduced to the literature (see Kessleret al., 2010) and was taken from Austin et al. (2007). It consistsof five items. Sample items are “I used my emotional skills tomake my supervisor feel guilty” and “I made my supervisor feeluneasy.” Cronbach’s alpha was 0.92.
RESULTS
We conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to test the factorstructure and the convergent and discriminatory validity of ourscales. Statisticians have noted that a prerequisite for reliableresults of a CFA is a satisfactory indicator to sample ratio(see, e.g., Bentler and Chou, 1987; Bentler, 1995). Due tothe relatively high number of items compared to the samplesize, we therefore used a parceling approach, as recommended(e.g., Bagozzi and Heatherton, 1994). For building the parcels,we followed a factorial algorithm by combining items intoparcels according to the factor loadings of the items (e.g.,
Little et al., 2002; Rogers and Schmitt, 2004). To minimize lossof information, we only built parcels for the two longer and well-established leadership scales, and parcels consisted only of twoitems (and one parcel of three items in case of transformationalleadership due to the uneven number of items). The CFA showeda satisfactory fit of the hypothesized six-factor structure (i.e.,employee Mach, ethical leadership, transformational leadership,employee affiliative OCB, employee knowledge hiding, andemployee emotional manipulation): χ2 (614) = 942.95 (p = 0.00);CFI = 0.90; IFI = 0.90; RMSEA = 0.06. Factor loadings weresatisfactory ranging from 0.45 to 0.75 for employee Mach,from 0.53 to 0.82 for ethical leadership, from 0.73 to 0.89 fortransformational leadership, from 0.56 to 0.72 for affiliative OCB,from 0.42 to 0.89 for knowledge hiding, and from 0.73 to 0.94 foremotional manipulation. Factor inter-correlations ranged from−0.33 (ethical leadership and emotional manipulation) to 0.78(ethical leadership and transformational leadership).
While one of our dependent variables was rated by leaders(affiliative OCB), the other dependent variables (knowledgehiding and emotional manipulation) were measured as employeeratings and might hence be subject to common source bias.Such bias may inflate or deflate observed relationships betweenconstructs (e.g., Podsakoff et al., 2003). To test for commonmethod variance, we therefore included the same-source first-order common method factor to the CFA. This factor was definedas having as indicators all employee-rated items, and this controlsfor the portion of variance attributable to obtaining all measuresfrom a single source (see Podsakoff et al., 2003). If commonsource variance played a role, factor loadings and/ or inter-correlations should differ substantially for CFAs including versusnot including the common method factor. A comparison of theCFAs showed that factor loadings and factor inter-correlationswere almost identical in both computations, thus suggesting thatcommon source bias might not play a substantial role in our data.
The means, standard deviations, Cronbach’s alphas, and(Pearson) inter-correlations of the variables are presentedin Table 1. Employee Mach was positively correlated withknowledge hiding (r = 0.42; p = 0.00) and emotionalmanipulation (r = 0.28; p = 0.00) and negatively correlatedwith ethical leader behavior (r = −0.20; p = 0.01). Consistentwith earlier studies (e.g., Brown et al., 2005; Toor and Ofori,2009), transformational and ethical leaderships were substantiallycorrelated with each other (r = 0.65; p = 0.00), thus illustratingthe need to simultaneously include both variables in subsequentanalyses to be able to draw better conclusions about the uniqueeffects of ethical leadership. Finally, employee affiliative OCBwas significantly correlated with transformational leadership(r = 0.20; p = 0.01), but not correlated with ethical leadership,and knowledge hiding and emotional manipulation were bothnegatively correlated with ethical leadership (r = −0.23; p = 0.00;and r = −0.32; p = 0.00).
To test our hypotheses, we used the PROCESS macro (version2.13.2; developed by Hayes, 2013) to conduct our analyses. Morespecifically, we regressed employee affiliative OCB, knowledgehiding, and emotional manipulation on employee Mach, ethicaland transformational leadership, and the interaction term ofemployee Mach and ethical leadership. In the analyses, we used
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TABLE 1 | Inter-correlations and descriptives of variables of interest.
M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6
1 Employee Mach 2.78 0.92 (0.80)
2 Transformational leadership 5.42 0.85 −0.22∗∗ (0.90)
3 Ethical leadership 5.32 0.79 −0.20∗ 0.65∗∗ (0.84)
4 Affiliative OCB 5.56 0.75 −0.09 0.20∗ 0.13 (0.84)
5 Knowledge hiding 1.80 0.91 0.42∗∗−0.16∗
−0.23∗∗−0.13 (0.86)
6 Emotional manipulation 1.75 1.09 0.28∗∗−0.15 −0.32∗∗
−0.23∗∗ 0.50∗∗ (0.92)
N = 159. ∗p < 0.05. ∗∗p < 0.01.
TABLE 2 | Results of the moderation analysis using the PROCESS macro.
Affiliative OCB Knowledge hiding Emotional manipuation
B (SE) p B (SE) p B (SE) p
Constant 4.51∗∗ (0.58) 0.00 2.12∗∗ (0.64) 0.00 1.88∗ (0.74) 0.01
Age employee 0.00 (0.01) 1.00 −0.01 (0.01) 0.13 −0.01∗ (0.01) 0.03
Gender employee 0.02 (0.13) 0.90 −0.28 (0.15) 0.06 −0.44∗∗ (0.17) 0.01
Age leader −0.01 (0.01) 0.35 0.00 (0.01) 0.65 0.00 (0.01) 0.62
Gender leader 0.28∗ (0.12) 0.02 0.15 (0.14) 0.27 −0.05 (0.16) 0.75
Length of relationship 0.01 (0.02) 0.48 0.03 (0.02) 0.14 0.01 (0.02) 0.74
Employee Mach −0.03 (0.07) 0.62 0.34∗∗ (0.08) 0.00 0.18∗ (0.09) 0.04
Ethical leadership 0.01 (0.10) 0.89 −0.19 (0.11) 0.09 −0.49∗∗ (0.12) 0.00
Ethical leadership × Mach 0.16∗ (0.08) 0.04 −0.19∗ (0.09) 0.03 −0.34∗∗ (0.10) 0.00
Transformational leadership 0.16 (0.09) 0.08 0.03 (0.10) 0.80 0.18 (0.12) 0.13
R2 0.10 0.27 0.28
N = 159. ∗p < 0.05. ∗∗p < 0.01.
the PROCESS option to center the predictors around theirrespective means and based the interaction term (Mach x ethicalleadership) on these mean-centered scores to ease interpretation.As research on OCB and on dark personality traits often includesdemographics as control variables, we also added employee ageand gender (1 = male, 2 = female; both measured as employeeratings) as well as leader age and gender (1 = male, 2 = female)and the length of the relationship between leader and employee(all three measured as leader ratings) as covariates. The results ofthe moderation analyses are presented in Table 2. Indeed mostof the demographics were significantly related to our outcomevariables.
Ethical leadership only had a significant main effect onemotional manipulation (B = −0.49, p = 0.00); the othermain effects of ethical and transformational leadership werenon-significant. More importantly though, and (mostly) inline with Hypotheses1–3, the main effects were qualified bysignificant interaction effects of employee Mach and ethicalleadership for affiliative OCB (B = 0.16, p = 0.04), knowledgehiding (B = −0.19, p = 0.03), and emotional manipulation(B = −0.34, p = 0.00). To facilitate interpretation of theseinteraction effects, we plotted the relationship betweenemployee Mach and the three outcome variables (affiliativeOCB, knowledge hiding, and emotional manipulation) forhigh and low values of ethical leadership (Figures 1–3),while controlling for the effects of transformationalleadership.
First, Mach is significantly and negatively related withaffiliative OCB for low ethical leadership (B = −0.21, p = 0.05) butnon-significantly for high ethical leadership (B = 0.13, p = 0.22,Figure 1). Next, the relationship between Mach and knowledgehiding is significant and positive for low ethical leadership(B = 0.53, p = 0.00) and non-significant for highly ethical leaders(B = 0.15, p = 0.21, Figure 2). Finally, the relationship betweenMach and emotional manipulation is also significant and positivefor low ethical leadership (B = 0.52, p = 0.00) and non-significantfor highly ethical leaders (B = −0.16, p = 0.24, Figure 3).
DISCUSSION
High-Mach employees are a group of employees that is usuallydepicted as negative in the literature and sometimes even asdangerous for organizations (e.g., Dahling et al., 2009, 2012).Research has shown that high-Machs often make unethicalchoices and have the tendency to use manipulation anddeception in social situations (e.g., Williams et al., 2010; Dahlinget al., 2012). In line with this literature, we indeed foundemployee Mach to be significantly positively related to bothhiding knowledge from colleagues and emotionally manipulatingsupervisors. Similarly, we replicated earlier findings that Machis not significantly related to affiliative OCB (e.g., Dahling et al.,2009; Bagozzi et al., 2013). Yet, other authors found a negativelink between Mach and OCB (e.g., Becker and O’Hair, 2007),
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FIGURE 1 | Interaction effect between ethical leadership and employeeMachiavellianism for affiliative OCB.
FIGURE 2 | Interaction effect between ethical leadership and employeeMachiavellianism for knowledge hiding.
suggesting that moderators might play a role and explain theseinconsistent results in the literature. High-Machs might only helpothers if they expect to receive a reward in return for their help,for instance, using OCB as an impression management tactic toreceive a more positive supervisor evaluation (Becker and O’Hair,2007). We therefore investigated the interactive effects betweenemployee Mach and supervisors’ leadership style on employeeunethical behavior and OCB.
Belschak et al. (2015) have argued that leadership might offerthe possibility to influence high-Mach employees’ behaviors inpositive ways, and specifically they show that transformationalleadership can increase high-Machs’ challenging OCB. However,they also caution this may not generalize to other outcomes.Building on this idea, we argued that high ethical leadershipwould reduce high-Machs’ unethical work behaviors andincrease their motivation to show affiliative OCB, whereaslow ethical leadership would have the opposite effect. Indeed,
FIGURE 3 | Interaction effect between ethical leadership and employeeMachiavellianism for emotional manipulation.
the relationship between Machiavellianism and affiliative OCB,knowledge hiding, and emotional manipulation was moderatedby leaders’ ethical leadership. The findings of our study showthat in particular under low ethical leadership high-Machsshow undesirable reactions, while Machiavellianism was notsignificantly linked to affiliative OCB, knowledge hiding, andemotional manipulation when ethical leadership was high.Thus, low ethical leadership seems to trigger high-Machsto engage in more unethical behavior, whereas high ethicalleadership suppresses the expression of such behavior by high-Mach followers, rather than high ethical leadership explicitlystimulating ethical behavior in high-Machs. By ignoring theethical dimension in employee behaviors and not caring aboutor monitoring employees’ (un)ethical behavior, low ethicalleaders seem to signal to their followers that it is acceptableto use unethical means and hence trigger undesirable behaviorsparticularly in high-Machs who have a predisposition to fall backon unethical behavior to achieve their ends.
Similarly, Greenbaum et al. (2017) found that high-Machsengage in unethical behavior under abusive supervisors andargue that abusive supervisors may provide cues that activateemployees’ Mach trait, stimulating the expression of trait-consistent behavior. Our findings provide further support for theconcept of Mach trait activation and for the notion that high-Mach employees can at least to some extent be managed as theirbehavior is linked to specific leadership styles (see Wilson et al.,1996; Belschak et al., 2015).
Somewhat surprisingly, we found that employees generallyshowed the highest affiliative OCB under low ethical leadership.A potential explanation of this unexpected finding is thatcolleagues may compensate for a lack of people-oriented leaderbehavior in a team. If followers are facing a lack of guidance,support, and help from their leader (i.e., low ethical leadership),they might look for and receive help from their colleagueswho fall in and compensate for their leader’s deficiency.A similar compensatory model has been reported for perceived
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organizational support and perceived supervisor support (Maertzet al., 2007). Future research should further investigate thiscompensation mechanism in which followers step in for theirleader and help each other where the leader fails to support them.
Literature on knowledge hiding has argued that such behaviorharms the organization and thus, in turn, the knowledge hiderhim/herself (e.g., less money available for financial bonuses dueto reduced work unit performance; e.g., Evans et al., 2015). Ifshowing strategic and calculated behavior, high-Machs shouldthus avoid such behavior as they ultimately would also sufferthemselves from its negative consequences. Yet, our findingsshow that knowledge hiding is strongly positively linked to Mach,despite of its potential for longer term detrimental effects. In thisrespect, the literature on Mach suggests that high-Machs mightnot adapt their behavior to potential longer term indirect effects(see Wilson et al., 1996). In game theoretical experiments, high-Machs aim for short-term profit maximization (e.g., Sakalakiet al., 2007) and easily change groups if needed (see Wilsonet al., 1996); they thus seem more likely to strive for instantgratification than delayed rewards (see Christie and Geis, 1970).While knowledge hiding might harm the company in the longrun, in the short run, it provides high-Machs with a source ofpower (cf. French and Raven, 1959) and status, hence giving themthe opportunity to outperform others and achieve other externalrewards (e.g., a bonus or promotion; Webster et al., 2008).Overall, the findings thus indicate that high-Mach individualsprioritize short-term profit maximization over long-term profitmaximization, which would be of interest to test in futureresearch.
Despite of the increased risk of targeting supervisors withunethical behavior, our results show that high-Machs not onlyengage in knowledge hiding toward colleagues but also inemotional manipulation toward their supervisors, in particularfor supervisors low on ethical leadership. High-Machs’ tendencyto use unethical behaviors when they have sufficient roomto maneuver and the ethicality of their actions is not closelymonitored thus seems to generalize to a broad range ofmanipulation and deception behaviors and to different targets.This result resonates with the results of an earlier study(Austin et al., 2007) which also found a positive link betweenemotional manipulation and Mach and extends it by introducinga contingency variable, (low) ethical leadership. While Machwas uncorrelated (Kessler et al., 2010) or even negatively linkedwith emotional intelligence in earlier studies (Austin et al.,2007), Bagozzi et al. (2013) found in fMRI studies evidence thathigh-Machs seem to use (non-conscious) emotional resonanceprocesses which might allow them to “intuitively” feel andmanipulate others’ emotions. Future research should furtherinvestigate the link between Mach and emotional manipulationand its underlying mechanisms.
A strength of our study is that we controlled fortransformational leadership. Ethical leadership shows similaritieswith transformational leadership (e.g., the strong valueorientation; see Brown and Treviño, 2006), and correlationsbetween the two constructs are usually high (see Ng and Feldman,2015). It is therefore important to control for transformationalleadership in empirical studies on ethical leadership to be able
to determine the variance explained uniquely by each construct(see Den Hartog, 2015).
Practical ImplicationsOur findings offer several practical implications. First, high-Mach employees should be managed carefully. Our resultsshow that high-Machs are sensitive to the behavior of theirleaders and adapt their behaviors to leaders who emphasizeand reward certain practices. Yet, our study also suggests thatleadership effects seem to be limited to very specific employeebehaviors. Leaders thus need to be clear and explicit to high-Mach employees about employee practices that are acceptableand those that are not. For instance, transformational leaders’emphasis on change stimulates change-related behaviors likechallenging OCB in high-Machs (Belschak et al., 2015), whereasethical leaders’ focus on ethical behavior motivates them toavoid unethical work behaviors. In this respect, organizationsare also well advised to introduce (ethical) organizational valuesand policies to communicate acceptable and desirable employeebehaviors. Developing reward systems that clearly reward ethicalbehavior and punish unethical behavior could further help inestablishing such norms and values.
Also, high-Machs seem to perceive a lack of specification ofdesirable behaviors as a signal that all means are acceptable toreach their goals and hence easily engage in unethical and otherorganizationally undesirable behaviors. High-Machs thereforeform a group of employees that are particularly in need ofguidance by leaders. While passive leadership generally comeswith negative employee reactions in terms of increased incivility(Harold and Holtz, 2015), a lack of leadership seems to lead toeven more pronounced effects for high-Machs who strongly fallback on unethical work behaviors that are particularly damagingto the organization.
Ethical leadership seems especially suitable to counter high-Machs’ tendency to engage in unethical work behaviors, anda lack of such leadership can be easily interpreted by high-Machs as a signal that “anything goes.” Fortunately, ethicalleadership can be combined with other leadership styles liketransformational or transactional leadership (see Den Hartog,2015). It therefore seems good advice for leaders to alwaysshow ethical leader behaviors when high-Mach followers arepart of their work unit. To suppress unethical behaviorfrom these employees, organizations should therefore offerleadership training for leaders that particularly focuses on ethicalleadership (emphasis on ethical behavior) and transactionalleadership aspects (systematic use of monitoring, rewards, andpunishments).
Finally, organizations might consider to include measures ofMachiavellianism or (ethical) values in their personnel selectionprocedures. While measures of Mach are generally valid, it mightbe difficult though to measure high-Machs’ true personalityduring selection as this group of individuals is likely tomanipulate their answers in socially desirable ways in situationsin which they perceive the outcome may depend on a specifictype of answer. In this sense, organizations might rather want torely on long-term experiences of colleagues and supervisors toidentify high-Machs and carefully consider this information in
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promotion decisions to avoid that high-Machs rise into highermanagement positions in the organizational hierarchy.
LimitationsAs most studies, this study also suffers from a number oflimitations. First, we used a cross-sectional design and collectedour data at one moment of time, and therefore we cannot makeclaims about the direction of causality. Experimental research iswarranted to establish the direction of causality. For instance,work units that are characterized by highly unethical practicesand an “all means are acceptable to meet one’s targets” employeeattitude might be appealing to and attract in particular lowethical leaders. In this sense, it would also be interesting toinvestigate our topic from a longitudinal perspective and explorehow processes unfold over time.
Second, we investigated only a limited range of employeebehaviors. We have focused our study specifically on one ethicaland two unethical behaviors, and our results suggest that high-Machs react clearly differently to leaders on these behaviors thanon challenging OCB, as found in earlier studies. Thus, futureresearch should further investigate and specify the different typesof work behaviors that high-Machs adapt as a reaction to aspecific leadership style. This would also be helpful for offeringfurther advice to practitioners on how to manage high-Machemployees.
Also, our sample is not representative for the population ofDutch organizations, and there might be differences in ethicalvalues across different industries that may have affected ourfindings. However, respondents in the study came from a broadrange of different industries and organizations with no singleindustry being substantially more strongly represented thanthe others, which makes it unlikely that ethical values aresystematically biased in any specific direction in our sample.Future research should consider and control for potentialindustry-related differences in ethical values and norms.
Finally, while we measured affiliative OCB as a supervisorrating and hence from a different source than the other variablesin our study, employee Mach, leadership styles, knowledgehiding, and emotional manipulation were measured as employeeratings, which comes with the risk of common source variance.While our test for the effects of common source variance didnot provide any evidence that common source bias may haveaffected our results, we cannot exclude this possibility. However,the main contribution of our study lies in the investigation of theinteractive effects of employee Machiavellianism and leadershipbehaviors, and scholars have noted that analyses includinginteraction terms do not suffer from inflated interaction effects
due to common method bias; rather, measurement error reducesthe probability to find significant interactions (e.g., Busemeyerand Jones, 1983; Siemsen et al., 2010). Also, it is difficult tomeasure variables such as personality traits and covert, deceptivebehaviors such as knowledge hiding and emotional manipulationthrough other ratings. In particular, there are currently no well-validated non-self-reported measures of Mach available. Futurestudies might collect leadership data from other sources though(e.g., colleague ratings) or develop other-rated measures of Machthus including even more different data sources.
CONCLUSION
This study investigated the link between leadership, employeeMachiavellianism, and ethical (affiliative OCB) as well asunethical employee work behavior (knowledge hiding andemotional manipulation). We found that the relationshipbetween Machiavellianism and these behaviors was stronglyinfluenced by leaders’ ethical leadership style. EmployeeMachiavellianism came with reduced affiliative OCB andincreased knowledge hiding and emotional manipulation, butonly when ethical leadership was low. More research is warrantedin the area of Machiavellians’ reactions to different leadershipstyles in order to help managing this group of organizationalmembers.
ETHICS STATEMENT
All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance withthe Declaration of Helsinki. More specifically, at the beginningof the survey, respondents were informed about the content andpurpose of the study; the academic nature of the study, i.e., thestudy was conducted by a university for research purposes; thevoluntary nature of participation, i.e., participants did not receiveanything in return for participation and participants were free tonot respond to any question; and the fully anonymous natureof the study, i.e., it is impossible to identify either individualrespondents or participating organizations.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
FB, DDH, and ADH conceived and developed the project. FBand ADH coordinated and conducted data collection. All authorscontributed to all parts of the manuscript, agreed to all aspects ofthe work, and approved the final version of the manuscript.
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Conflict of Interest Statement: The authors declare that the research wasconducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that couldbe construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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